


The Last Bogeyman

by Anna__S



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s been counting bullets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Bogeyman

 

 

She wakes up curled into the knot of a tree.

Her nostrils are filled with the distinct, earthy smell of the forest after a thunderstorm, and the knees of her jeans are caked with dry mud.  There’s almost no blood this time, except for the scratches running up and down her arms.   Jenny pulls a small twig out from her hair.  

She doesn’t know where she goes during these lost hours. She’s not even sure exactly when it begins; it’s more of a gray out than a black out.  But she always ends up back here in these woods.  

That’s where it started. That’s where it will end, someday.

She wipes her hands off on the tree’s bark and begins the long trek to her foster not-home.  By the time she gets back, the sun is fully up and she thinks she can make out Sue’s profile through the kitchen window. 

Jenny considers trying to climb up the rain gutter, but they’ve probably already found her empty bed and her hands ache and her knees are stiff from the walk.  She takes a long, calming breath and turns the knob. 

Sue stares straight at her and then turns back to the stove, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Jenny can’t quite make out the words, but she knows, she knows.

_That crazy Mills girl out all night again.  That slut. Nobody in the world can control that girl._

* * *

 

This place is a prison, this place is a sanctuary. They can find her here, but they can’t take her.  

She sleeps with the lights on, with the full glare of the sun on her face. The night is for planning, for strength exercises, for watching the mirror out of the corner of her eye. The nurses don’t care when she sleeps, as long as she doesn’t make trouble and she pretends to take her pills.

“You look just like your mother, my dear,” her nurse told her on her first day, like it was a gift, but she knows better.

After that, she fixes her expression into a sullen mask, makes her face all sharp points, so nobody offers their version of kindness to her.

She tries not to think about her mother, weak, frail, dead in a cemetery somewhere, or her sister, the good sister, the pretty sister who said all the right things, the sister who is out there in the world, complete, living a whole life. 

Everybody has lots of lives they never live. Somewhere, Jenny’s a beloved sister, a beloved daughter.  Somewhere, she knew when to lie.  Somewhere, she’s cooking dinner right now.

  

* * *

  

Jenny slips the granola bar into her pocket. She’s contemplating how easy it would be to hide a sleeve of crackers in her coat when she feels a heavy hand on her shoulder.  

“You should put that back, young lady.”

She spins around, already on her toes, weighing the pros and cons of fight versus flight when she recognizes him.

“Caught by the sheriff,” she mumbles. “Of course.” 

“You’re the Mills girl,” he says and she wants to spit in his face, wants to punch him right in his soft belly, because there are two Mills girls and somehow that only ever means her. 

But, she’s already lost most of this year to prison and the institution and she wants to taste freedom until Thanksgiving, at least. She places the bar back on the shelf and puts her hands up. 

“I was going to pay for it,” she says.

“No you weren’t,” he says. “But if you’re that hungry, I’d be happy to buy you some lunch.”

Her eyebrow arches and she takes one step away from him. “I’m good.”

“It would be a favor to me. I owe you a meal and an apology.”

“What could you possibly owe me for?” she asks.

“Because this town has not done right by you, Miss Mills.  It’s past time somebody paid you back for that. And because I believe that you were telling the truth, all those years ago, when you told us what happened to you and your sister.”

She squints at him, trying to decide if this is a strange joke at her expense or something more dangerous. But his face is serious and kind. And she has been hungry for days, maybe weeks. 

Jenny nods and he escorts her out of the store, keeping his hand on her shoulder like a warning.  At his car, he opens the door for her and she hesitates.

She’s been in enough rough places to know that this could take a nasty turn, real fast.  And everything in her life up until that moment has taught her that this man is her enemy. She stands on the pavement, feeling the comfort of her knife in her pocket, wishing it were a gun.  He watches her watch him. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.

“I might hurt you,” she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot, still ready to run.   

“I don’t think you want to hurt me, Jenny.”

Something about the way he says her name, softly, like it’s a secret, makes her stomach ache.  She shakes her head.   

“I don’t. But I might. I don’t…it’s not always up to me.” 

“Okay,” he says in a quiet voice. “Well, I’m going to trust you, anyway. Maybe someday you’ll repay the favor.”

She steps into the car, pushing aside the grimy coffee cups and doughnut wrappers.  He takes her to a diner, buys them both an entire pie, and tells her she has a choice to make about her life.  And she doesn’t know why, but she almost believes him. 

 

* * *

 

Corbin teaches her how to read Aramaic. He gives her pocket money. He tells her that there is a time and a place for the truth and time and a place for holding your tongue, but that’s a lesson she never learns. 

He reads her legends like they’re history. She finally learns about the war she’s been a pawn in all these years. 

She wakes up one morning with salt in her mouth, salt in her hair, salt under her fingernails.  Just another night lost to her other self, she thinks, but there’s a strange emptiness inside her, like one of her organs has been scraped out.

When he finally asks her to join him, she decides to help him preserve mankind and in the process, she hopes she’ll realize it’s worth saving.

  

* * *

 

Jenny spends the first eighteen years of her life in Sleepy Hollow, and the next five everywhere else.  Somalia, Mexico, Spain, China, Vietnam, Norway, and now, Transylvania. Which she always thought was just a place in a book, but turns out to be a mountainous, gray country with more than its fair share of backwater towns. 

She sips at her beer, drinking it slowly. It’s cold at least, although the glass is filthy. If she had to guess, she would say she’s probably the first black person they’ve ever seen in this place. Definitely, the first black woman to show up here in the dead of winter on her own.

She counts the people in the bar and the bullets in her gun. 

And when he walks in, she knows it must be the guy she’s supposed to meet because he’s almost out of place as she is. Nick Hawley looks like he got lost on the way to a surfing competition. 

“Jenny Mills?” he asks and she nods.

“You’re not exactly what I expected when they said they were sending in reinforcements,” he admits.  He signals at the bartender and a glass of dark beer appears.  

“And what did you expect?” she asks, feeling her temper rising to the surface. 

“I don’t know.  More Indiana Jones, less juvenile delinquent?” 

She ignores this dig, if it even is a dig. “So do you have any more details?” 

He takes a swig from his glass, before looking up at her. “I have the details.  Although I’m not sure I buy them.” 

“Try me,” she says, meeting his gaze. “I believe everything.”

“Apparently the casket we’re looking for belonged to some famous vampire.”

She lets out a laugh.  “Seriously?”

“I thought you said you believed in everything?”

“Maybe even I have my limits,” she says, raising her eyebrow at him like it’s a challenge.  “So you’re skeptical?”

He shrugs.  “I believe in making money. If somebody is willing to pay me for something, that’s all the information I need.” 

Hawley pulls a piece of folded fabric from his pocket. The tanned hide is covered in faint markings that look like the first sketches of a map.  She leans her head in so their cheeks are almost touching, her fingers moving swiftly over the map. 

“That’s where we are?” she asks, pointing to a small cluster of crosses.  He nods and places his hand over hers, guiding it left.

“And if my geography is right, these hills are where we need to go tomorrow.”

She grins at him, already feeling the first twinge of adrenaline.  He matches her grin with his own. 

Jenny decides she likes his curls, but mostly she likes how he walks through life, like nothing can touch him, probably because nothing ever has. Later, after everything’s settled and they’ve found their prize, she might even fuck him. 

 

* * *

 

August pulls at his boots, looping the laces with his usual methodical care.  

“I’m getting dinner with Abbie at the diner tonight, you should come,” he says. 

She gives him her sharpest look. He usually knows better than to try that with her.  But to her surprise, he doesn’t immediately back off.

“She’s your sister.  Someday, you’re both going to feel like real idiots about how long this feud lasted.”

She feels her jaw clench.  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“You were kids, Jenny. Even if she had said she believed you, what difference would it have made? They would have locked you both up anyway.” 

She swings towards him, like maybe she’s headed to the door. “Yeah, and what about the last few years?  Has she been at my door, waiting to give me an apology? Did she come to my court hearings? Is there something I’ve missed?” 

He stops putting on his boots and sighs. “The demon is finally gone, Jenny. Maybe it’s time for you to start rebuilding your relationship with your sister. Just take a step. Eat some pie. Let me do the talking.”

“Yeah?” she says, cocking her head to the side. “And how honest have you been with my saintly sister, August? Does she know about all this?” she asks, gesturing at the thick tomes around the room, the biblical paintings on the walls, all the demon artifacts she’s collected for him.  

“Does she know about all your hobbies? Your obsession with the horsemen of the apocalypse?  How you like to save girls with the last name of Mills?” she spits out the last word like it’s a bullet.

He’s quiet.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. Her voice is steel.

He stands up and reaches for his coat. “Someday, the two of you are going to find your way back to each other, and I just hope I’m there to see it.”

  

* * *

 

On the anniversary of his death, they go to his cemetery together, taking turns whispering their farewells into his headstone. 

The sun is warm on Jenny’s face, but there’s a nip in the air that smells like fall. The grass is almost impossible to see beneath the layer of rotting brown leaves.

She thinks about what he said to her, one of those last nights before she ended up back in jail after a drinking binge, about the sadness in his eyes when he walked out that door. He was right in the end. All it took was his death.

Abby steps back, stretching her hand out to Jenny. She squeezes it and steps forward.

What she planned to say was _thank you for bringing my sister back to me_ , but that victory belongs to them. 

She places her hand on his headstone, her finger tracing the U of his name.  _You gave me a purpose, you saved my life, you weren’t family, but you were better, because you could’ve chosen anybody and you chose me._

There were things Corbin never really understood. He knew about demons, but not about people; about the things that creep and crawl inside, the broken things that will always slither out, because none of them are made quite right.

She never figured out how to tell him that it wasn't the demons she was scared of. 

She closes her eyes, feeling the cold marble under her hand, and in a voice so low it’s almost just breath, she finally tells him.

 

* * *

 

She watches them from across the living room, the way their heads tilt into each other, how their bodies move in sync to form a V, and she isn’t surprised. She’s been waiting for this. 

When he leaves for the night, he lingers too long, says goodnight into Abby’s neck, like it’s a form of foreplay and maybe it is. For all she knows, in the eighteenth century, that kind of whispering was considered second base.

“You sure that’s the best idea?” she asks, nodding at the door Ichabod just disappeared through. 

Abbie looks up at her, her eyes widening. Her deer in the headlights expression hasn’t changed since they were first caught shoplifting in the fifth grade. For somebody who’s spent a lifetime lying, she’s pretty bad at it. 

“That’s none of your business,” Abbie says.

“Well, since God hand-picked the two of you to save the world, it seems like it might be everybody’s business.“

Jenny picks up a dirty plate and turns on the water, twisting it all the way to the left so the water scorches her hand. She scrubs violently at the bits of chicken and cheese. 

“What, are you afraid we’re going to get into a couple’s spat and forget about the apocalypse?”

“Maybe,” says Jenny, still working on the same plate, shoving the sponge against the ceramic.  “Or maybe I’m worried about you making eyes at a guy with a _wife_. A wife who just happens to be a witch.” 

She drops the sponge and turns around. “It wasn’t so long ago that Katrina was all he could talk about, Abbie. You’re telling me there’s nobody from this century you could possibly date?” 

“So, now you’re worried about me?” asks Abbie, looking like she can’t decide whether she should be touched or angry.

“Is that so crazy?” asks Jenny.

“Kind of,” says Abby, but she’s smiling now. “I will take your advice into consideration.  I don’t think it’s exactly what you think it is, though.”

“Uhuh,” says Jenny in her most skeptical voice. “Sure.” 

She picks up another plate, trying to push away the thoughts prickling at her, the recognition that this is just another thing she's never going to be a part of.  

 

* * *

 

The voice inside her isn’t gone completely, but it’s quieter 

On her good days, she hopes those urges she’s always brushing up against, that turn her brain into an unpredictable jungle, are just an echo of something sinister, a last remnant of the demon that Corbin never managed to find. 

On her bad days, she knows the voice belongs to her. She’s spent too much of her life thinking about ways to kill Abbie to let it go entirely. It’s burnt into her DNA, as much a part of her as that mole on her back. 

And those days, she doesn’t let herself fall asleep. Night has always been a dangerous time for her.  

She keeps herself awake by thinking about the older sister who held her hand on the first day of kindergarten. Who cut the crusts off her sandwiches and sliced them into imperfect triangles. Who told her they were better off without their dad and almost managed to sound like she meant it. Her partner in crime.

She thinks about today, and how before they cleaned the kitchen, they wrapped bandanas around their head like their mother always did, and that moment, that shock of recognition, when they looked at each other and realized they were remembering the same memory.

She tries not to think about the fact that Abbie believed Ichabod and not her.  She tries not to wonder why it isn’t the two of them taking on the apocalypse. When she finally lets herself sleep, she dreams that it is. 

  

* * *

  

She hears a knock at the door and her hand goes straight to her hip, where her gun used to live, before Abbie intervened. She settles for grabbing the sharpest kitchen knife she can find and standing on her tiptoes to see through the peephole.

Frank Irving is standing on the doorstep, wrapped in the standard grey Tarrytown Institute-issued blanket. His eyes dart from side to side.

She only hesitates for a few seconds before she swings the door open.

“Irving?”

“Where’s Abbie?” he asks. 

“Out,” Jenny says, in a tone that is flat enough to leave room for interpretation. 

“Are you gonna come in?” she asks, pushing the door further.  “It’s usually not a good idea for fugitives from the law to linger on porches,” she adds.

He takes a step forward and nearly tumbles to the ground, his hand grabbing at her shoulder for balance. She can feel his fingers shaking and his eyes are wide and unfocused. He looks like a fucking mess. She remembers that glazed feeling, like her brain had been wrapped in cotton. 

“Jesus,” she says. “When was the last time you slept?”

He tightens his hold on her arm, slumping against her. “I don’t…remember. Jenny, you need to tell Abbie, I did something, I signed something.”

“Is this an emergency?” she asks urgently. “Do I need to track down the team?”

He shakes his head over. “No, but Jenny…”

“Shhh,” she says.  “Later. You need some sleep and to get those drugs out of your system.” 

She half-walks, half-carries him to her bedroom, kicking a pile of dirty laundry out of the way. She might have been embarrassed if she thought there was any chance he would remember.

He slides under the sheets, his teeth chattering loudly. 

“I signed it,” he says in a sob, clutching onto a handful of her sweatshirt. “I didn’t know, but I did it. I gave him my soul, Henry, he has it.” 

“Shh,” she repeats, a humming noise coming out of the back of her throat, like a fragment of some long buried song.

She squeezes his hand and tells him something she waited her entire life for somebody to tell her.  “It’s gonna be okay, Frank.  There’s nothing that can’t be undone.” 

His eyes are already starting to close, but she stays by his side and hopes that she's right.  

  

 


End file.
